A steep and somewhat rugged pathway wound up either side of the glen to the tableland at the summit, overhung with trees and shrubs of various kinds, with a rustic seat planted here and there at some specially romantic point of view. Ferns, mosses, flowers, and grasses innumerable clothed the rocky sides of the ravine down almost to the water’s edge. At the foot of the glen the stream was spanned by a quaint old bridge, on which the vicar and Dr M‘Murdo were now standing. It was the day of the picnic of which Madame De Vigne had made mention to Colonel Woodruffe, and the party from the _Palatine_ had driven over in a couple of wagonettes, which, together with the hampers containing luncheon, were stationed in a shady spot a quarter of a mile lower down the valley. ‘Look, Mac, look!’ exclaimed the vicar, ‘at those two speckled darlings lurking there in the shadow of the bridge. I must come and try my luck here one of these days.’ ‘You look just a bit feckless this morning without your rod and basket.’ ‘Where was the use of bringing them? No trout worth calling a trout would rise on a morning like this, when there’s not a cloud in the sky as big as one’s hand, and not breeze enough to raise a ripple on the water. I’ve brought my hammer instead, so that I shan’t want for amusement. Ah, Mac, what a pity it is that you care nothing either for angling or geology!’ ‘I could not be fashed, as we used to say in the North. Every man to his likes. I’ve got a treatise in my pocket on _The Diaphragm and its Functions_, just down from London, with diagrams and plates. Now, if I can only find a shady nook somewhere, I’ve no doubt that I shall enjoy myself with my book for the next two or three hours quite as much as you with your rod or hammer.’ ‘So that’s your idea of a picnic, is it?’ The question came from Miss Gaisford, who had come unperceived upon the two friends as they were leaning over the parapet of the bridge. ‘To bury yourself among the trees, eh,’ she went on, ‘and gloat over some dreadful pictures that nobody but a doctor could look at without shuddering? Allow me to tell you that you will be permitted to do nothing of the kind. You will just put your treatise in your pocket, and try for once to make yourself sociable. Perhaps, if you try very hard, you may even succeed in making yourself agreeable.’ ‘My poor Mac!’ murmured the vicar as he settled his spectacles more firmly on his nose. The doctor said nothing, but his eyes twinkled, and he pursed up his lips. ‘I have arranged my plans for both of you,’ said Miss Pen with emphasis. ‘For both of us!’ they exclaimed simultaneously. ‘Yes. Lady Renshaw’—— ‘O-h!’ It was a double groan.